A Glimpse of the Peaceable Kingdom
Sheep&Elephant-sleeping-together-posted-at-awesomelycute.com-19.jpg
Less than Kin, More than Kind
In 2006, Albert the sheep adopted Themba, an eight-month-old baby elephant at the Shamwari Game Reserve in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, who was orphaned when his mother died in a fall. None of the aunts in his extended family took him in, but Albert, nudged by rangers, took on the job. The two took walks daily and ate the same foods. Here they are napping together on a termite mound they have demolished. One can’t help but wonder if there were still termites crawling on it. Most of us wouldn’t find that a comfortable bed, but they apparently did! See Kind Father
Editor’s Corner Essay: In Memory of Harambe, continued
(The first part of this essay told the story of an endangered child named Richard brought to safety without repercussions--in contrast to the bittersweet ending of the story of little Isaiah Gregg’s fall into the gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo, which ended with the boy rescued, but the gorilla, tragically, shot to death.)
Pinpointing BlameLerner.jpeg
Why would so many persons rush to blame the child’s mother without knowing any details of the circumstances preceding his fall? One possibility, arising out of the work of social psychologists working in the area of victimology, is that their hasty decision that mother is the villain arises out of a variant of the pattern in which people often blame the victim in response to disaster, a response linked to scapegoating. These insights derive from social psychologist Melvin J. Lerner (pictured) and his colleagues, who conducted a series of investigations beginning in the 1960s. Searching for insight into his med students’ lack of sympathy for others who suffer, Lerner set up experiments in which a white-coated “research assistant” would instruct a group of student subjects to watch a scene in which a victimized person was being given electric shocks by another assistant, in a supposed test of the effects of negative feedback on learning. But the victims and assistants were acting; no shocks were given. Lerner varied some of the experiments, so that halfway through the scenario the watchers could mark an evaluation sheet in a way that would spare the victim any further shocks; but in other instances, this opportunity to rescue was not an option.
Lerner found that initially the subjects showed signs of empathic response to the supposed victim’s suffering; in their initial evaluations they emphatically protested the injustice done. But with time, most of them swallowed their anger, and finally dropped their protest altogether. Those who were in a position to stop any further shocks would usually evaluate the victim neutrally. (In a similar experiment by Lerner and his colleague Carolyn Simmons, all those in the group who were able to stop the experiment via a midpoint evaluation did so, and all rated the victim very positively). fingerpointing.jpg
But the subjects in experiments who were helpless to do anything had a strong tendency to rate her negatively. She was “a fool” to put up with the shocks, she was “weak,” she rated low on a scale of attractiveness, and the like. It seems likely that the students had had deep-level empathic pain, and eased it either consciously, by saving the victim if possible, or unconsciously by putting her down so that her victimization wasn’t such a dreadful thing after all.
Lerner theorized that this blaming of the victim arose out a root belief that the world is a just place; apparent tragedies and disasters could be averted, because they are the result of failures or misdeeds by the individuals in question. (This might be an unconscious carryover of infantile beliefs, if the theory is correct that infants perceive themselves as omnipotent, that everything they perceive is a result of their own actions or inactions, thus their own achievement or fault.)
Our language shows that this technique is employed to deal with humans’ discomfort about the killing of innocent animals for human food; nouns and adjectives referring to them become terms of abuse. When applied to a human, “bovine” means one is stupid and manipulable; to be “hoggish” is to be greedy and selfish; to be a “turkey” is to be a jerk; to be “chicken” is to be a coward, and the like. (Why this hasn’t happened to “lamb” is something of a mystery.) Verbally abusing beings who are horrendously abused physically is obviously part of the program by which people deaden their own qualms in order to continue profiting from unspeakable cruelties.
If we apply Lerner’s “just world” concept to the popular response to the near-disaster little Isaiah Gregg and his mother underwent, climaxing with the tragic killing of Harambe, we might say that the hundreds of thousands of people who were grieved at the killing of the gorilla to save the child, and rushed to blame the mother--because obviously they couldn’t blame a toddler--knew that all this wasn’t an accident, a tragedy happening to innocents; someone, that mother, had done wrong and needed to be punished in order to restore the justice of the world.
Pinpointing Cultural (“Original”) Sin
But there are other observers who see the heart of the wrong as a cultural rather than an individual evil, namely, the widespread idea in many cultures that human beings have the right to imprison nonhuman beings for display to other humans, primarily for entertainment, and also for human education and the preservation of threatened species. In fact, however, both of the secondary justifications are better served by keeping individuals of endangered species in wild life preserves, the humans who wish to observe them (and who support the preserve with their admissions fees) being shut up in vehicles or other small enclosures, while the animals are relatively free to roam large areas and engage in natural behaviors. Preserves take much more space, of course, than zoos, and probably have less financial support from the public.monkeys.jpg
The big challenge that we put forward is that all zoos are harmful to animals. Admittedly, zoo existence is much more destructive for some animals than others--the mental and physical health of big animals like elephants and whales, for example, who in nature regularly cover long distances, will necessarily suffer seriously in small enclosures and tanks. Colonies of monkeys (pictured), on the other hand, may suffer less. But any are vulnerable to stressful exploitation. For example, animals may be traumatically captured in the wild, and are bought and sold; some may be sold away from their companions to another zoo, or shipped about to serve as studs, doing violence to their psychological needs. It is no more justifiable to imprison animals for human benefit (except for abused and aggressive animals being treated for psychological damage) than to imprison unconvicted humans. Zoos, like animal-ag farms, are human enterprises based on the premise that nonhuman animals, because of their species, lack any right to life, liberty, and fulfilment, all of which human animals do possess by virtue of belonging to a superior species. Our culture decrees that some species we may or should care for, but some others we must regard as mere things, there to be killed for fun or imprisoned to be eaten. CagedApe.jpeg
The idea that animals are inferior beings we superior humans own or dispose of at our will cannot be proved by particular qualifications humans have that animals lack; humans have powers such as writing books, doing Euclidean geometry, and creating nuclear weapons, but those abilities hardly establish humans as morally superior; and animals have many powers we humans lack. We can be loving and altruistic, but then so can nonhuman animals (like Albert the adopting father of Themba in our “Glimpse of the Peaceable Kingdom”); both classes of beings can be violently aggressive. We may have immortal souls--in fact there are mountains of evidence that human consciousness exists beyond death (see “Whatever One Sows,” PT 47 , and preceding essays)--a concept that has often been thought, especially in Western religion, to establish human superiority. However, there is also evidence, though less of it, that “higher” animal consciousness survives as well! No uniquely human traits can prove that we are morally superior, and thus more valuable; ideas of human exceptionalism arise from a faulty cultural habit, namely a bias in favor of one’s own species. In a word, from prejudice.
This analysis is not new, but needs to be articulated once more because the very existence of the zoo enclosure and its imprisoned gorilla, and the killing of the gorilla to save the presumably more valuable human child, are in question here. In truth, the behavior of the crowd of humans and of the gorilla are rather similar in their psychological source and their harmfulness; apparently Harambe was trying to protect little Isaiah until the hysterical screaming of the humans had the unintended effect of arousing his anxiety and pushing him into potentially dangerous actions. Both parties evidently empathized with Isaiah and meant well, but fear turned good intentions destructive--not for the first time in history.
Hope is the Thing With Feathers
Returning to the story of Helen Patterson’s rescue of Richard: readers can immediately see that Ms. Patterson was in no real danger of being screamed at or shot, because she is a human being, and it was not evident to any onlooker that she was taking control of and sequestering a child not her own (as a kidnapper might). But had she not been there and acted swiftly--had little Richard been badly injured or killed--his mother would have been in for a hellish blame-the-substitute-victim ordeal, perhaps including jail, and lifelong pain.
If there is a life-giving message to be found in comparing these stories, it may be this: the injustice and violence that took place in one story, and were averted in the other, arose not from basic human malice, but from ignorance and deep-level, misdirected empathy. And therein we can find hope. For ignorance can be cured by the loving spread of truth put into action, and empathy can be turned from blaming victims to rescuing and healing them. Every one of us is a potential David Watt, the primatologist who suggested a nonviolent solution; every one is a potential Helen Patterson; every one is a potential Albert.
--Gracia Fay Ellwood
My thanks to Rosemary Carlson for encouragement and suggestions.
Unset Gems
“I choose to be with. Let my own skin be wounded, let the blood of our separate worlds be mingled. . . . The soul of kindness is kindredness, the sense that everybody--every body--shares a familial connection with me . . . .”
--Franceen Neufeld, from Suffering Eyes
“Our individual worlds are only as wide as our empathy. Why identify with only one species when we can be so much larger?”
--Joan Dunayer
NewsNotesCarlSafina.jpg
Conservationist Urges Respect for Our Animal Kin
Using the same terminology we use in PT, Carl Safina, author of Beyond Words (see book note below) warns humanity to stop destroying our (wild) animal cousins--or endure the consequences, the destruction of the habitable earth. See Kinship
--Contributed by Robert Ellwood
Safina Befriends Orphaned Elephants
Buenos Aires to Close Zoo
The mayor of Buenos Aires announced that the city is closing its 140-year-old zoo, for compassionate reasons. Most of the animals will be moved to sanctuaries. See Closing
--Contributed by Judy Carman
Eggland’s Best to Go Cage-Free
The largest specialty egg brand in the US, Eggland’s Best, has responded to an exposé campaign by Mercy for Animals, committing themselves to going cage-free by 2025.
Do they really need nine years? Still, it’s better than nothing. As always with such promises, we must keep an eye on them and make sure they follow through. See Eggland Gets Better
--Contributed by MFA
GoVegan Campaigns in British Isles
Eden Farm Animal Sanctuary in Ireland is carrying on a series of campaigns to promote veganism. Their billboards non-graphically, and effectively, promote empathy with suffering farmed animals.. See GoVegan
--Contributed by Marian Hussenbux
Pioneer: James Thompson, 1930 - 2015
James Thompson. called the Animals’ Padre, was born in England and grew to adulthood in Holywell in North Wales. Already in his teens he felt called to the ministry, and in 1948 enrolled in the Bible Training Institute of Glasgow. He left after only one term partly for financial reasons; nevertheless, as he reported, he had already developed a certain spiritual snobbery. james-lamb.jpg
Back in Holywell, sitting on a park bench and thumbing through his Bible for inspiration as to his next move, he was joined by an unsightly man from the local workhouse, a Mr. Norberry. With eyes piercing but kindly, saliva running from his mouth through stubs of black teeth, he spoke: “I see you are reading the Bible . . . God is love, you know! . . . God is love, and he is everywhere. In the grass, the sky, the fields, there is God,” and then pointing to himself, “and God is in me!” As he became increasingly excited, his unlovely face, which seemed to show much pain from his past, grew radiant with divine love.
This brief encounter was to serve as a lifelong inspiration to James, an awakening to God’s presence in those that human standards rank lowest and of least value. Its chief fruit has been his decades of devoted labor on behalf of animals. Like a biblical prophet, he has passionately denounced any form of cruelty to our defenseless cousins, whether committed by individuals or organizations, including the churches, and, like his scriptural forebears, he has encountered resistance and obstruction in the many congregations/parishes he has served. Sometimes he had to move on to others as a result. He has led protests and demonstrations, conducted services on behalf of animals, and collected signatures for pro-animal lobbies. He founded a group named Christians Against All Animal Abuse; he published several works treating of the animal concern, including his memoirs.
The first time James made headlines was not due to his activism but a highly romantic marital escapade. In 1954, twenty-four years old and a full-time pastor of a Baptist church, he eloped with his seventeen-year-old girlfriend Katie. They were followed across England by reporters, and their story made headlines in a number of tabloids, eventually being sold to one named The Illustrated. Their twenty-four-year marriage produced several children.
Most of his adventures, however, had to do with his vocal defense of animals. Here are two examples, from relatively early in his career, of high winds stirred up by his prophetic word. After studying and qualifying for the Anglican ministry in the late 1960s, he was placed as curate (assistant priest) in a parish in Doncaster in northern England. Before long his name appeared in the local paper as having emphatically condemned some local youths who had attacked birds with air rifles and hanged a cat on a tree in the nearby woods; James was quoted as demanding that the law tighten its penalties against the “young thugs.” It would have been better to condemn the actions than the persons, but James was still young, and aflame with outraged compassion. Their mothers were most seriously displeased, and so, to say the least, was James’ boss, the vicar, who evidently thought animals were mere conveniences for humans, not joint heirs with us of God’s kingdom. The unpleasantness reached a point where James was transferred to another parish in the same part of the country, with hints that if he stayed out of trouble, it would be a pleasant job..
This move turned out to be of the frying-pan-to-fire sort. The parish, Firbeck-cum-Letwell, was small but wealthy, and members were involved both in hunting and battery-cage farming. Predictably, the Rev. Mr. Thompson did not remain silent: his anti-cruelty articles in the parish newsletter aroused the wrath of a number of influential parishioners. One aristocrat who relished “country sport” and had no intention of letting compassion interfere with it made his counter-statement: he took his rifle along to church, laid it in the porch, and picked it up again after the service to continue hunting. Another who had shot some pheasants sent his gamekeeper to James with a generous gift of a brace of dead birds. James reported that, after a silent prayer for guidance, he handed the birds back, making it clear that he would have no truck with this kind of cruelty (though in fact he was not yet a vegetarian).
rev2.jpg
He also encountered the determined enmity of the local veterinarian, whose choice of work clearly was not motivated by compassion. When James told him that, God helping, he intended to be as fearless as John the Baptist in proclaiming the truth, the vet countered by warning him that the Baptist had lost his head, and Mr. Thompson had better watch out that he didn’t lose his as well.
No doubt he meant it metaphorically, and metaphorically it certainly came true. Faces very seldom seen in worship services appeared in church council assemblies clearly well-prepared for battle, led by the long-term churchwarden. In a series of nasty meetings, James was outwitted on technical points of order, and lost control of parish affairs. But the pain of this defeat, for himself if not for the animals, was alleviated when, the day following the worst of the meetings he received an offer to minister in a parish in an industrial area, a job that included being chaplain of a hospital.
Over time, James’ fighting spirit against cruelty and apathy and his tenderness for animals, both arising from his convictions of God’s compassion for them, gathered many supporters and allies among the public. There were other celebrated animal champions, but James was among the few who grounded his witness in a deep commitment to God and God’s call to him to minister in the church. He became well known in the media for his animal blessing and animal burial services, as well as annual services commemorating animals killed in wars at the site of a monument to them in London. It was this ministry of compassion that earned him the fond title “the animals’ padre.” His son recalled that from time to time he would bring home some unfortunate he had rescued, from chickens to goats.
It seems very strange to us that James was devotedly working on behalf of animals for years before he stopped eating them, but so it was (and has been with many other animal champions). He visited a vegetarian community as early as 1954, but their diet seemed merely odd to him then. It was only after the painful breakup of his and Katie’s marriage in 1978, when he began doing his own cooking, that he thought the matter through and went veg. It seems that he grew in other ways as well; our NewsNotes editor Marian Hussenbux, who was among his friends, reports that he was kind to everyone; he spoke gently and without hostility against any. She also relished his fine sense of humor.
James remarried five years after the separation from Katie, this time quite happily. His second wife Doreen was very supportive, chauffeuring him to events, helping to prepare reports, and the like.
James Thompson died in January 2015 of pneumonia, age eighty-four, survived by Doreen and his children. His son David and daughter Anne gave eulogies of him as an eccentric but loving and devoted father. We can imagine him entering Paradise and being greeted by all the animals he defended, rescued, and blessed.
--Editor
Most of the information in this essay is taken from chapter eleven of John M. Gilheany’s Familiar Strangers, which was reviewed in PT 72 .
Book Review: Meathooked
Marta Zaraska, Meathooked: The History and Science of Our 2.5-Million-Year Obsession with Meat. New York: Basic Books, 2016. 263 pages, $26.99 hardcover.
Why do we eat meat anyway? Even though a plant-based diet is demonstrably healthier, more compassionate, and better for the planet than platefuls of flesh, why . . .? Talk of veganism, vegan books, restaurants, and recipes are becoming more and more widespread, yet have hardly slowed the world’s devouring of “meat” animals; why? The answer is complex, and tells us much of what we know about the development of humanity physiologically, socially, culturally, and even politically, from the beginning of human differentiation from other primates down to the opening, perhaps yesterday, of new MacDonalds’ outlets in once largely vegetarian parts of India and China. Marta Zaraska's informative account of this story for the general reader is lively, full of interesting anecdotes: engrossing if sometimes disturbing reading.
Although chimps occasionally consume meat, their diet like that of other primates is mostly plant-based. It is thought that humans began to look for the flesh of other animals--probably scavenging more than actually hunting --as the African climate became drier, changing jungles to savannas full of game but less of fruit and nuts, and as they learned to walk and even run upright for the search and the chase. At the same time, emergent human intelligence enabled our distant ancestors to make spears, knives, and scrapers, and on another level to communicate well with others in their groups. This was important for a relatively small and weak species in a realm of lions and charging boars, with nothing much going for them but their brains and the ability to work together effectively. Then the taming of fire enabled cooking meat, necessary for its large-scale consumption, since our teeth and guts are better designed for eating plants.Zaraska.jpg
This narrative is charged with controversy among specialists, and the jury will probably be out for a long time on whether hunting/scavenging came first and its demands made us human, or vice versa. Zaraska tells the basic tale well, however, and also makes clear the consequences. Meat has always had far more behind it than taste and nourishment; indeed, as many parents know, it often has to be a learned taste and its food value mixed. But meat’s prestige has much to do with hunting parties. subsequent tribal feasts, and social status. Successful hunters, usually male, may be idolized as heroic figures because of the skill and danger involved in the quest; the mostly gatherers were unexciting day-to-day providers. Even the gods must love meat, given the animal sacrifice found in most archaic religion.
Killing and eating animals meant increasing ability to control nature and make it serve human needs, and to win or prove divine favor. It often bespoke social class; in medieval Europe and into modern times, hunting and consuming animals was largely a prerogative of the aristocracy, who punished poaching, sometimes with death. A chicken in every pot is still a symbol of an upwardly mobile society, and in much of the "developing" world westernization has meant exponential increase in meat consumption. It is thought there is something special about meat. The author recalls that in her native Poland, when supplies were short during the Communist period, people would stand in line for hours for a few scrawny exemplars of the sausages for which the country is famous, though plenty of plant-based food might be available.
Zaraska goes on to discuss the fate of meat-eating in traditional world religions and cultures. In the case of Christianity, she points out that the early church in Jerusalem under James, the "brother of the Lord," is thought by some scholars to have been vegetarian, and that if Christianity had gone that way instead of the Gentile-oriented path of Paul, the story might have been quite different.
However, her account of subsequent Christianity is over-simplified. It cannot be denied that much of mainstream Christianity through the centuries was anti-vegetarian, associating it with Manichean-type heresies. But in ancient times many Christian groups, and notable saints like Isaac the Syrian and Clement of Alexandria, were vegetarian; and even in medieval and modern times there were important exceptions (presented earlier as Pioneers in The Peaceable Table), like Wulfstan, John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, or John Chapman ("Johnny Appleseed") the Swedenborgian Protestant saint, down to the thousands of members of the Christian Vegetarian Association and other Christian groups today. None of this is mentioned here.MartaZaraska.jpeg
I regret that Zaraska also accepts the thoroughly discredited idea that Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian. That claim was a figment of Goebbels' propaganda machine, and no more to be believed than most of its other claims. See review of the excellent short book Hitler: Neither Vegetarian nor Animal Lover by Rynn Berry , PT 8. (At the same time, I have often wondered why, even if the monstrous Führer had been vegetarian, that would be an argument against our going veg. Such a position would by implication justify the claim that we should be vegetarian because the equally monstrous Stalin and Genghis Khan were enthusiastic flesh-eaters.)
Meathooked then goes on to chapters on taste, petri-dish meat, factory farming, the political and economic power of the meat industry, the social difficulties many have in giving up meat, the "pink revolution" by which Asia is getting hooked on animal flesh, the lapse into obscurity of past vegetarian movements, and other topics. Activists will be familiar with much of this, but it's well told and valuable in a book for the general public. Zaraska herself avoids meat most of the time, and certainly presents vegetarianism sympathetically, though rightly for a historical book intended for readers of a range of persuasions, does not engage in polemics.
The book ends with a discussion of the current vegetarian movement and its possible outcomes. In much contemporary society, meat-eating is still associated with power, living well, family, masculinity, and sex, despite increasingly widespread knowledge to the contrary; and is disconnected as far as possible from actual animals and their suffering (except for hunters, who glory in being killers.) At the same time, many vegans are forming their own subculture, some dating other vegans only, some claiming that vegans even smell different from omnivores. The wheel is still spinning on where it is all going, and the fate of the earth may depend on the direction to which it finally points when it stops.
If these are topics that fascinate you, this is the book for you. It is highly recommended, and particularly suggested as a presentation to friends who are just beginning to wonder about the meat issue and all that goes with it. See that your library has it too.
--Robert Ellwood
Note: In referring to Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Khan as monstrous we at PT do not mean that they were inherently evil, but that they chose to turn themselves into monsters--always retaining the potential of turning back into real human beings.
Book Note: Beyond Words
Carl Safina, Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2015. 461 pages, b&w plates. $32.00 hardcover.
This New York Times bestseller can be highly recommended to anyone looking for a well-written popular introduction to animal issues, full of delightful and poignant animal anecdotes and a passionate concern regarding the harm heedlessly done to animal societies by humans. Indeed, primary attention is given to animal societies, such as those of dolphins (with whom the book opens), primates, wolves, dogs, bears, birds, and above all elephants. But even solitary mammals, birds, and some others are likely to be interconnected at least in the mother-child relationship.CarlSafina.gif
Against any remaining disciples of Descartes and the "machine" view of animals, Safina follows, or leads, the contemporary scientific mainstream as it flows strongly toward seeing in animals consciousness, emotions, and the complex relationship patterns we humans can at least begin to comprehend and identify with. This means, of course, that if an animal is killed in a slaughterhell or by a poacher, the tragedy is felt not only by the victim, but by a circle of family and friends who, at least in the case of elephants (perhaps the most sensitive of all), visibly mourn, conduct what is in effect a funeral, and never forget.
You will never forget either, after reading this tender, deeply-felt, and well-informed book. Beyond Words is meant for libraries, personal shelves, and gift-giving time.
--Robert Ellwood
Recipe: Green Soup
Beautiful Soup, so rich and green,
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!--Lewis Carroll
cream-broccoli-soup-Savvy-Vegetarian.jpg
A few Tbsp olive oil (less if you are watching your oil intake)
6 garlic cloves (or more if you fancy garlic!)
10 or 12 oz. of broccoli and cauliflower, chopped into small pieces
3 or 4 cups of vegetable broth (or water and veggie bouillon cubes)
Salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup white wine (optional)
Mince the garlic. Heat a small amount of olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the garlic and just "sweat" the garlic; stir it just a minute or so until the aromas are released, but do not let it start to brown. At this point you can add white wine to the garlic if you so choose. Cook it on medium heat 3-5 minutes or until you can smell that the alcohol has cooked off and you have a lovely savory aroma. Add the vegetables and the broth. I eyeball the amount of broth, based on how thin or thick I want the soup to be; you can always add more later. Simmer everything until tender, maybe 10-15 minutes. Remove from heat. Pour into blender, making sure that you only fill the blender 3/4 full so that it does not splatter. If you like your soup chunky, blend only part of the soup. Return blended soup to pot and season to taste with salt and pepper. If it feels it needs something, add a tablespoon full of Earth Balance or your favorite buttery spread, and you're ready to serve.
This soup is simple and (thanks to the cauliflower) creamy, and my three-year-old loves it. I never measure anything for this recipe, so these measurements are approximate. It can be made with any variation of these vegetables you have on hand. For example, I sometimes do onion instead of garlic, or I may add kale or a little carrot. See what you have on hand and let your creativity flow!
--Fay Elanor Ellwood
Poetry: Galway Kinnell, 1927 - 2014
St. Francis and the Sow
The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint FrancisPigletsNursingB-753877.jpg
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.
--G.K., 1980
The photo is from the website of Sugar Mountain Farm (see Sugar Mountain ) which offers the piglets for sale throughout the year, listing prices and providing information about marketability. It also has a photo of a roasted piglet on a platter. Nothing is said about the mother’s great broken heart.
he Peaceable Table is a project of Quaker Animal Kinship, a non-profit organization, also known as the Animal Kinship Committee of Orange Grove Friends Meeting, Pasadena, California. It is intended to resume the witness of that excellent vehicle of the Friends Vegetarian Society of North America, The Friendly Vegetarian, which appeared quarterly between 1982 and 1995.
The journal is intended to be interactive; contributions, including illustrations, are invited for the next issue. Deadline for the September issue will be August 27. Send to graciafay@gmail.com or 14 Krotona Hill, Ojai, CA 93023. We operate primarily online in order to conserve trees and labor, but hard copy is available for interested persons who are not online. The latter are asked, if their funds permit, to donate $15 (USD) per year. Other donations to offset the cost of supplies and of the domain name and server are welcome. Send checks to Robert Ellwood, Treasurer, 14 Krotona Hill, Ojai, CA 93023.
Editor: Gracia Fay Ellwood
Book and Film Reviewers: Benjamin Urrutia and Robert Ellwood
Recipe Editor: Angie Cordeiro
NewsNotes Contributor: Lorena Mucke
Technical Architect: Richard Scott Lancelot Ellwood
Issue copyright © 2016 Vegetarian Friends
Published by Google Drive–Report Abuse–Updated automatically every 5 minutes